Idolatry in the ancient world involved worshipping images of stone, precious metal, or wood, which people believed represented their gods. This is the form of worship and practice that the Jewish prophets, like Isaiah, denounced and ridiculed (Isaiah 44:13-17).
Because such statue-centered worship is not prevalent in our context, the biblical injunctions against idol worship are today applied to a more subtle type of “worship” to which we are vulnerable. We are rightly warned that we can make an “idol” of money and wealth. We can give ourselves wholly to pursuing fame and fortune, as the saying goes. Pleasure, career, achievements, and virtually anything can functionally become an object of our devotion, to which we may offer ourselves as if to God. In this sense, we may readily engage in idolatry, though there is not a golden statue of Zeus in our home.
However, underlying both the ancient homage to statues and the contemporary adoration of personal status and possessions, is a mistaken view of the world. This flawed perspective gives rise to idolatry in all its forms, but to understand the problem we need to understand how the world should be viewed.
For since the creation of the world His (God’s) invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. Romans 1:20
Since all creation is the loving work of God, everything inherently bears the imprint of God to some degree. The Creator can be seen in and through his creation, which means that our perspective ought to be looking not simply at but through all things to glimpse God. All creation testifies to its Creator, and therefore all things are a visible witness to an invisible God.
They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures . . . and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator . . . Romans 1:22-25
Idolatry stops looking through created things to see God, but looks to the things themselves as if that is where “glory” or significance is found. Paul’s use of “image” is the word “icon” in Greek. Everything should be an icon (image) of God through which the invisible God is seen in his visible handiwork. Idolatry makes very different images which are not windows to God but the perceptual end of our attention. Idols actually prevent us from seeing God.
Though everything is in some manner an image of God, Christ is the image (icon) of the invisible God in fullness (Colossians 1:15,19). We are all created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Our Christian way of looking at all things finds the presence of God everywhere. All creation is an icon (image) directing us to God, with Christ as the final and full expression of God.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols. 1 John 5:21
The way to heed John’s admonition is to develop the capacity, by grace, to see God in everything and everyone. We will not “idolize” anything if we come to see everything as pointing us to the unseen God. We will not look at, but through everything to God who is the Source of all. This requires prayer and contemplation.
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